Pad Your Fine Art Collection with Some GIFs

Digital art has long existed in the ethereal gray space between actual, physical art and performance art. While it isn't a tangible object, like a painting or a sculpture, it does continue to exist after its initial creation, unlike performance art, which, even if captured on film, only exists during its live performance. But with more artists moving into the technological realm, it's no surprise that artists and galleries are looking for ways to make digital art more saleable. After all, even starving artists have to eat eventually.

Phillips, a high-end auction house in New York City, has organized Paddles On, an auction and gallery show that specifically sells digital pieces, including GIF art. Profiled in an article on The Verge yesterday, Paddles On has been billed as "the first digital art auction." On sale were webcam video files, GIFs, websites, and pieces of code alongside prints and sculptures. Perhaps because the art sold for much lower prices than more traditional pieces—the most expensive piece in the sale was valued at $18,000—Paddles On drew a much larger crowd than usual for Phillips.

Of course, buying digital art can often become an exercise in the absurd. In some cases, rather than hauling home a canvas, you're merely pocketing a thumb drive, something that often makes it hard to quantify. Molly Soda, a GIF artist from Chicago, tells The Verge, "I think a lot of people have issues making money off the work, because it's not a physical thing. It's like, 'You're not an artist. Where is your painting?'" Especially for a beginner art collector, the thought of taking home a thumb drive, or some lines of code, rather than a painting may make for some squeamishness.

Another potential hiccup with buying digital art is that technology changes so fast, some day the thing you own may no longer be operational. As Dr. David Anderson, an art preservationist at the University of Portsmouth in Britain told The Guardian a few years ago, "In digital art, the key is to find ways of preserving the colour and visual aspects of a piece of art. If we don't preserve the digital art made today, it could be like walking into a world-famous gallery and seeing nothing on the walls, that no art has survived some global meltdown." After all, no one is going to want to point to a stack of paper full of 1s and 0s 30 years from now and say, "that was a cool GIF once."

But art is always a product of our times, and our times happen to be chalked full of technology. So for now, it may be a good idea to get your hands on some digital art while it's still relatively cheap. Just make sure to keep that AppleCare warranty up to date.